


Rearranged

by Jaded



Series: Royal Arranged Marriage [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arranged Marriage, Cassian in cravats, F/M, Princess Jyn Erso
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-19
Updated: 2017-05-19
Packaged: 2018-11-02 08:17:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10940568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaded/pseuds/Jaded
Summary: Jyn Erso lies awake in bed and thinks of all the little girls all over the world who dream of being a princess like her. She wishes she could tell them the truth about it--of the way it traps her like a bird in a cage--about how, even when the prince is as handsome and dashing as Cassian Andor is, it isn’t a fairy tale with a guaranteed happy ending, not when you are forced to get married and you don’t know each other at all.Arranged Royal Marriage AU.





	Rearranged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nordbo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nordbo/gifts).



* * *

 “They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.”

\--F. Scott Fitzgerald, _This Side of Paradise_

* * *

 

Cassian smiles too easily--automatic and on cue; Jyn smiles too little, expression flat or angry when it is not otherwise shuttered. And today is no different. It just happens that this day is their wedding day.

 

“Scowl if you want under your veil, dear,” her mother Lyra says patiently, “but remember to smile when the cameras are on.” Her mother hands her the bouquet--white roses and coral peonies wrapped with a satin ribbon and adorned with pearls. “Do it for me, will you? And for Papa. Do it for the country.”

 

And that’s exactly what Jyn does because it’s what she has done all her life. 

 

At the entrance to the church she takes her husband-to-be’s arm, and at the altar they take each other’s hand in marriage. Their first kiss comes in front of thousands of screaming subjects of a constitutional monarchy that has no real power save for the power of it as an image, and the people swoon over their beautiful princess and their new prince. But at night, the spell is broken and the two of them politely part ways in the hall and retreat to their separate bedrooms in a house they are supposed to share for the rest of their lives.

 

Jyn Erso lies awake in bed and thinks of all the little girls all over the world who dream of being a princess like her. She wishes she could tell them the truth about it--of the way it traps her like a bird in a cage--about how, even when the prince is as handsome and dashing as Cassian Andor is, it isn’t a fairy tale with a guaranteed happy ending, not when you are forced to get married and you don’t know each other at all.

 

+

 

Over tea, when she has been married a month and three days, her old friend Bodhi verbalizes the pragmatic but questionable advice that no one else dares to say aloud.

 

“You can always have an affair, Jyn. It’s not that unusual. Royals do it all the time. It’s in your blood.” He motions for the staff to bring him more sugar for his cup of lavender Earl Gray, and he stirs it idly, watching to see if her expression changes. It does not.

 

“There are ways to be discrete, mum,” her private secretary, Baze Malbus, tells her later when she brings it up casually. He's stone faced and serious when he says this, but he's always stone faced and serious. She wishes he’d say more about it, but typical of Baze, he does not. She knows better than to press the point.

 

“It’s not a love match, dear,” her mother tells her later while adjusting her tiara, but holds off on another lecture on the importance of the Andor family and its connections and influence.

 

It’s another night, another state dinner with a visiting ambassador and his entourage. It’s the second major event she’s attended as a married woman. Jyn smooths her hands over the baby blue satin of her gown, and she thinks about her husband--and she’s getting used to thinking of him as that, _her husband_ \--dressing in his room across the hallway. Her mother hums a lullaby Jyn remembers from her childhood as she adjusts the pins in her hair. “I’m sure Cassian has been made aware of the same possibility. The only thing you have to consider, darling, is that when the time comes, the heir must be his.”

 

Jyn feels herself color. She know show sex and pregnancy work, and how love isn't always involved, but it’s one thing to hear it from her own mother’s lips. “But what about you and Papa?” she dares to ask.

 

“Affairs? Dear me, no.” Her mother laughs, the laugh of a queen--bright as citrus and polite and clear as the ringing of a bell. Lyra spins Jyn around and cups her face in her hands. “Your father and I love each other, Jyn, but we were lucky.” Her mother kisses her forehead. “Perhaps you will be as lucky as we are one day.”

 

“I don’t know about that,” Jyn says, taking her mother’s arm. She takes a deep breath and runs over in her mind the talking points she’s prepared to get through the night’s barrage of small talk and polite dinner conversation, even when sometimes she wants to scream about politics, wants her opinions not only to be heard but listened to.

 

“Are your ready, dear?” Lyra asks.

 

Jyn plasters on the smile of a princess and checks her reflection in the mirror as they exit the room. “As much as I’ll ever be,” she says.

 

+

 

The evening goes over smoothly, and she’s only a little drunk by the time dinner is done. There’s a bit of dancing afterward, and there’s a flutter that runs through the guests when Cassian sweeps her into his arms and waltzes her around the room. They’re surprisingly compatible, gliding across the room like they’ve been doing this together all their lives, but then the dance is over he leads her back to his parents and parts ways to speak to some of the guests. The heat of his hand on her back quickly fades away, gone even before she can watch him walk away.

 

“How is married life?” her cousin Leia asks, sipping at another flute of champagne.

 

But Jyn doesn’t hear her. Across the room, she spies Cassian bowing politely to a woman in a gold dress, sees the woman’s hand come to rest on his shoulder and linger there, too familiar, and she watches him tilt his head to stare at it with vague interest. Jyn's ready to move over there in an instant, her temper flaring at this sign of disrespect at her party in her country, but then she sees Cassian turn his head, watches his body shift so that he is looking over his shoulder and at her. And then she sees a knowing smile spread across his face when his eyes lock with hers and he steps back, and Jyn relaxes. She turns back to her cousin. 

 

“What was it you said, Leia?” she asks, her composure back.

 

+

 

Cassian’s aristocracy and not royalty, and to some people it makes a difference, but he’s her husband now, and Jyn chafes at the little dropped comments because an insult to him is an insult to her. He was the best choice, by far, and anyway, where were they going to find her a marriageable prince in this day and age who also had important ties between her country and his?

 

Jyn watches the backhanded insults roll off him like water from a duck’s back, and she’ll admit--there’s some grudging respect that begins to build.

 

And he’s respectful of her and her space and her desires. He has been since the start. He keeps to his room; she to hers.  Their's is an arranged marriage, and he keeps to all the rules, almost to a maddening degree.

 

Jyn remembers her mother's earlier words and remembers that at some point she knows there will be talk of children again, but the future of the country hardly rests on that these days, and Jyn takes a deep breath--she does understand her duty. She’s simply in no rush to get knocked up and swollen-footed quite yet.

 

For his part, Cassian keeps busy and does well to showcase his dedication to his new nation. The pet projects start small and uncontroversial: feeding hungry children; emphasis on locally farmed foods. And as their first year goes by, he seems to get his footing and moves outside the carefully constructed bubble of proper royal PR to bolder projects, projects closer to his hart: he spearheads the creation of an innocence project to free those wrongly convicted of crimes; he throws his support behind relief efforts for refugees entering the country. She watches him work and move, and she suddenly feels like the man who was once a stranger across from her at the dinner table is someone worth knowing--someone she is lucky to know. 

  

+

 

Then trouble rears its ugly head.

 

Bodhi is the one who brings her the actual tabloid, but her staff has been buzzing about the news all morning, trying their best--and failing--to keep her from the news.

 

“Antsy Andor: The Prince’s Wandering Eye?” Jyn spits out the headline and throws the newspaper on the floor. There’s a blurry picture of Cassian, head too close to the face of an unidentified blonde, and it’s innocent enough but then nothing is innocent when it comes to the way the press covers their personal lives. She grits her teeth, tells herself this is about dignity--her own and that of the state. “Who do I need to kill?” she asks.

 

“I’m sure it’s nothing!” Bodhi says, but his voice wavers with uncertainty. He tries to give her a hug, but she breaks away, irritated with the world.

 

“You don’t actually care, do you, Jyn?” Bodhi asks, stepping back and looking at her, eyebrow quirked. “You’re not...jealous, are you?”

 

The look Jyn shoots him could get her life in prison for attempted murder, save for that fact that she is still the royal crown princess.

 

+

 

“What is this?” she asks when Cassian’s personal secretary, Kay, arrives at her door with a note.

 

“From the Prince.”

 

Enclosed in an ivory envelope and sealed with wax is a letter. Her name is written with a flourish on the front, and she recognizes Cassian’s neat handwriting. She breaks the seal and reads the letter by the window. It’s an explanation--about the blonde, about the tabloids--and it's from him directly, and not from his staff. 

 

 

 

> _Chirrut has already contacted the papers and demanded a retraction The woman in question is a board member to one of my charities and nothing more. I would like you to meet her, if your schedule sees fit. The work the organization does is invaluable, and I think you would be proud of the work they do._
> 
> _Though the story is all false, even the hint of scandal is too far, and I am deeply sorry for that. I would never wish you you any embarrassment or harm, Jyn. Please know that._

 

She finds him in his room later, knocks and leans against the door when he opens it himself. Waving it in the air, she says, “You could have just told me in person.”

 

When she holds out the letter, and he moves to take it. But Jyn doesn’t let go, and when he realizes this, he doesn’t either.

 

“I’m glad you came here to tell me that,” he says. He sucks in his cheeks and smiles. There’s a smattering of stubble on his face, and she thinks about how much the beard suits him.

 

“Well,” she says. “Well.”

 

+

 

Her father’s old friend from university is a bore and a creepy old man. Though he insists that she still call him “Uncle Orson,” as he did when she was a child, his designs toward her have always been less than familial. She still remembers the way his eyes lingered on her when she was just a teenager, and she hasn’t forgotten his thinly veiled suggestions to her father of his own eligibility as a husband when she came to a marriageable age.

 

The first time he visits after her marriage, he lobs barbs and insults in Cassian’s direction. Cassian takes it as he does everything else--with that easy smile, automatic and on cue, but she sees the fire in his eyes and the anger that simmers there. It makes her feel strange, makes heat pool in her belly, makes her stare at Cassian a beat too long so that he catches her in the act.

 

As the evening party finally nears its agonizing end, she finds Cassian in the dark of the library with an arm pressed against Uncle Orson’s neck. His body is all coiled tension, the muscles of his arms and neck strained and screaming a threat. The sound of her footsteps must draw his attention because his arm drop when she walks in. Jyn stares into the darkness and watches as their silhouettes move apart like shadow puppets in the final act of a play.

 

Cassian's speaking but half the words he says are whispers unheard. But he's loud enough that she hears snippets-- _say what you will of me, but say her name again and I will kill you--_ and like that, Orson is gone and out the door without a second glance at either of them.

 

“What happened?” she asks as Cassian passes, but his eyes burn into her, and she has to look away.

 

“Don’t ask,” he says.

 

+

 

But of course she asks. She’s Jyn Erso. She’s his wife.

 

The servants are all asleep or at home, and when the lights are all out she pads from her room to his.

 

“What happened?” she asks, and his lights are on and he’s barefoot and awake. Cassian has on a soft gray t-shirt and linen pajama pants. It’s the most undressed she’s ever seen him, she realizes.

 

He shakes his head, but she doesn’t accept it as an answer.

 

“Is it what I think?” she asks, coming to sit down beside him on the bed. The mattress gives slightly under her weight. She’s short enough that her legs don’t touch the floor. Her thigh touches his, and she feels strange and daring and nervous.

 

“Am I allowed to know what you think? Am I supposed to know?” His voice is gentle, but the inquiry still stings. _When did she start to care?_ she wonders. She wasn’t supposed to. That hadn’t been the plan.

 

“I think you do,” she says.

 

Cassian runs his hand through his hair. It’s still stiff with product, but Jyn likes how it looks on him. “I don’t care what people say about me,” he says. “I’m used to it. But when they start mouthing off and insulting the people I care about--it’s where I draw the line.”

 

Her heart thuds loudly in her chest, and he turns and looks at her like he can hear it. “You care about me?” she says, and her own voice sounds far away, even to her.

 

His chin drops to his chest and he sighs. “Of course I do, Jyn. You’re my wife.”

 

“Just because I’m your wife?” she asks, and then her hands have a mind of their own. They inch toward his and find them clenching at the sheets. _His eyes are so brown,_ she thinks, _so sincere. How have I never noticed before?_ One hand comes to rest on top of his, and she feels the knuckles and bones and sinew that make him up. He’s warm and alive and has been living across the hall from her all this time.

 

He shakes his head, and she realizes he’s the best and kindness man she knows after her father. She’s lucked into him without doing a single thing to deserve him, and she realizes that if she wastes another minute, she'll be a fool.

 

Cassian looks at her, and that’s all that she needs to rise to her feet so that she can turn and straddle his lap. His lips part, wordless, and she can’t stop staring at his mouth. She’s waiting--for his response, for him to push her off and send her out--but his free hand finds her instead, cups her cheek, fingers sliding down the column of her throat and tracing the vulnerable hollow where her breaths rumble past, fast and shallow.

 

“Kiss me, Cassian?” she says, and she’s never meant anything more in her whole life. The desire she’s bottled up out of sheer stubbornness and fear has been ready to explode for longer than she cares to admit, and she needs to let it out, but he has to agree to let her in first.

 

But Cassian Andor is a good man, and he doesn’t leave her waiting.

 

His arms coil around her, and he trembles with the same need she feels. She feels his beard scrape against her face, and she pulls him closer until she’s breathless. Daring and reckless, Jyn lets one hand roam free, inching it along his thigh and taking in how his voice hitches and his muscles clench when she draws closer and closer. One more sweep makes him jerk against her, and he huffs a laugh that only makes her want to do it again.

 

“I’ve dreamt of this,” he tells her, voice hoarse when he has to break the kiss for air. She squirms in his arms, desiring nothing from him but _more, more, more._

 

“I have too,” she pants as he kisses her neck and she says his name over and over. His mouth is soft as he says hers, and he spills her onto the bed, boneless and wanting, and they take their time, sharing with each other the contents of their dreams.

 

+

 

Morning comes and Jyn is in a place both familiar and unfamiliar. The skin of her shoulder is cool in the early morning air but warm on her legs, her hip--in the places where Cassian touches her as he sleeps. Pulling the sheets to her chest, she curls her body next to him, kissing his naked shoulder, her fingers splaying across the expanse of his back. She sighs, content as a cat in a sunbeam.

 

 _What is he to her, save for her husband?_ she wonders. _The prince to her princess?_ She doesn’t quite know what yet except that she wants him and that there’s no going back from last night.

 

Cassian rolls over, his eyes still glued shut in sleep, but when they are face to face, his lips curl up into a gentle smile. “Good morning, wife,” he says, voice thick with sleep. 

 

Jyn leans up into him, kisses him hard, unable to mask her smile. “Good morning, husband.” He wraps his strong arms around her shoulders and pulls her closer in response. She settles in the crook of his arm, her messy hair tickling his nose.

 

“We should do this everyday,” he murmurs, opening his eyes and looking at her in a way she suddenly recognizes because she realizes she's seen him look at her that way before--in a way that makes her now so dizzy with affection.

 

“Yes, please,” she says, nestling in his arms, thinking _maybe I got lucky after all._

 

+

 

His things find their way into her room, slowly but surely. His favorite shirt. His brown leather slippers. His stack of books about airplanes and history and robotics. Their toothbrushes kiss on the bathroom counter, and he finds her hairs in this boar's bristle hairbrush.

 

She carelessly leaves lipstick on his collar that the laundry staff struggles to get out when Jyn tries her own cleaning method and makes the stain set deeper (but it’s okay--Cassian doesn’t mind, especially since she starts wearing that particular button-down shirt, and nothing else, to bed at night). They trip on each other’s hastily discarded clothing left on the floor in the morning until she finally asks Baze to order her his and hers hampers for her quarters--their quarters. And quietly and surely, Cassian’s room transforms into their study and Jyn’s room becomes their bedroom.

 

Most days they go about their own business, only brief touches in passing, hidden kisses in the corridors whenever they can find a moment together, and Jyn vows to talk to Baze and Kay so that they can get their schedules better coordinated.

 

“I miss you like crazy,” Cassian says, kissing her behind the ear when she has a garden show to attend.

 

“I’ll make up for it tonight,” she says, shivering in delight, letting him kiss the tips of her fingers as they break apart. And she keeps to her promise. She feels like a cartographer, feeling her way through the discovery of the skin and and muscles that make up his body. She wants to map and explore every part of him she's yet to know. She wants to commit it to memory.

 

He tells her he loves her that night, and they’re both surprised--not by it being said but that it has been left unsaid for this long. 

 

Jyn once thought she knew what love was. A passionate but brief affair when she was at university had filled her eyes with stars, and she thought she knew in the way the young always thought they knew. But she now knows that it wasn’t the case--knows that what she felt then was not love because she knows what it is now--that what she has with Cassian _is_.

 

"I love you too," she says, and she feels every word.

 

And life, for these precious months, is this sudden perfection, like summer days full of cool water and sunshine. But summer comes with storms, too, and a dark cloud makes its way into her parlor on day, unannounced.

 

“What is it?” she asks, embracing her mother. Lyra's pale face is wan and blank as a sheet of paper--not like that of a fresh leaf but of one that’s had all its writing erased. “What’s wrong?” Cassian, who sits by the window, looks up from his book, then stands as though he understands immediately that something is wrong.

 

Baze follows quietly behind Lyra, and he is even grimmer and more serious than he usually is.

 

“What’s wrong?” Jyn cries, panic rising in her throat. Cassian reaches out and grasps her hand.

 

“Your father,” Lyra whispers, the dam holding in her tears breaking. “He’s gone.”

 

Jyn sways. _Her father. The king.  Papa._

 

She knew this day would come--it did for all children--but Papa was still so young, so vibrant. It couldn’t be.

 

Baze kneels, and his face is even more solemn than she’s ever seen it. Jyn knows what he is going to say next, and she is filled with the deepest dread.

 

“The king is dead,” he says, his eyes wavering with tears, and it’s that image of this stoic man’s face that shakes off her shock and wakes her to grief. “Long live the queen.”

 

Jyn then watches her mother kneel, followed slowly and carefully by Cassian. She feels the weight of the world come down on her shoulders, the weight of the pain on her heart, and then the impossible weight of the crown on her head.

 

“The king is dead,” her mother repeats. Jyn looks at her, then at Cassian, sees his mouth move to say the next words. Jyn shakes her head no, closes her eyes, but it cannot stop the inevitable. “Long live the queen.”

  


**Author's Note:**

> Say hi to me on tumblr at @operaticspacetrash


End file.
